Something minimal, irrelevant without context, like the tapping of a marble inside a metal container. It is nothing more than that. But it is a lot, because it is the sound, the noise, the verification that the mission has worked and that we have the first samples of an asteroid, here on Earth .
You can listen to it below.
Hayabusa 2
The first samples of materials mined under the surface of an asteroid, the asteroid Ryugu, dated at 4.6 billion years, landed in Australia on December 6 .
The Japanese scientists of the Hayabusa 2 mission have released a video of a maneuver to immediately verify that there was content in the received sample capsule. To confirm without opening it that the capsule had samples inside, the scientists turned the capsule and obtained the answer with the following sound:
While at the Quick Look Facility in Australia (before opening the capsule back in Japan), the team tried to hear if a sample had been collected using a high-performance microphone as they turned the capsule over. This is the sound of Ryugu! pic.twitter.com/gfaTk94QmH
– HAYABUSA2 @ JAXA (@ haya2e_jaxa) January 28, 2021
The capsule contained a total of 5.4 grams of samples . On February 22, 2019, the probe successfully touched the asteroid after a controlled descent to sample, obtaining this amount of regolith. The tweet read:
While at the Quick Look Facility in Australia (before opening the capsule in Japan), the team tried to listen to whether a sample had been collected with a high-performance microphone while turning the capsule. This is Ryugu’s sound!
Its study allows us to better understand how the Solar System was formed and consequently our planet and us. That sound was the clue that we were on the right track .